The Two Faces of Silence - Dezső Váli and György Király in Dialogue

Selecting from the works of the Horn Collection, the exhibition presents the encounter of two independent painterly worlds belonging to different generations. For decades, Dezső Váli has been exploring the interior of the artist's studio, while György Király’s paintings are rooted in still lifes—simple vessels arranged on a table. However, this everyday starting point is never mere copying for either of them. In their paintings, elements of the visible world become a medium for deep, internal experiences, where colors, light, and rhythms take center stage.

Váli’s core motifs—the window, the easel, and the chair—never grow wearisome. In his work, the studio functions simultaneously as a physical place and a fluid, adaptable structure. The empty spaces in his compositions do not seek to tell a story; instead, they carry a powerful sense of human presence and an underlying emotional tension.

Király opens up the traditional genre of still life toward abstraction. His jugs and mugs float in a blurred, dissolving light, shedding their everyday functions. For him, the focus shifts away from the objects themselves to the relationships and subtle internal movements that exist between them.

The ultimate common denominator between the two artists is silence, which in their paintings does not signify the absence of sound, but rather a dense, tension-filled state. Váli condenses space into an image, while Király dissolves objects into space. The works on display do not offer quick answers. They demand slow, deliberate attention from the viewer, inviting us to discover painterly freedom in the minute shifts, changing lights, and temperature of the colors. In this space, silence becomes visible as the most saturated form of presence.